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Story on Gender Identity Disorder is False

By Kathy Wilson
Gender Identity Center of Colorado, Inc.
December 16, 1998

A recent AP story has been widely misquoted within the TG community to imply that the American Psychiatric Association has deleted Gender Identity Disorder from its list of mental disorders. This is not the case. Work on the Fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) has scarcely begun, and any resulting policy changes are years away.

The article, by AP reporter Robert Weller, did carry an important message for the transgender community and is listed below in its entirety. It announced a historic decision last Friday by the APA Board of Directors to reject the practice of "reparative" therapies attempting to convert gay, lesbian and bisexual people to heterosexuality. This followed by more a year a similar resolution by the American Psychological Association.

This decision is positive news for the TG community on several fronts. First, it addresses the reported abuse of Gender Identity Disorder against children and adolescents who are suspected of being gay by intolerant parents or therapists. Second, it acknowledges the dangers of pathologizing people on the basis of difference instead of distress: "The very existence of therapy that is supposed to change people's sexuality, even for people who don't take it, is harmful because it implies that they have a disease," said Stotland, of Rush Medical College in Chicago. "There is evidence that the belief itself can trigger depression and anxiety."

Third, this resolution was authored by Dr. Dan Karasic, of San Francisco General Hospital, a strong advocate for respectful and nonpathologizing transgender medical care. He chaired a historic workshop on transgender issues at the APA Annual Meeting in Toronto earlier this year. This decision demonstrates the growing clout of tolerant, progressive people in the American Psychiatric Association who are well aware of issues with the current diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism. These include language that is ambiguous, conflicting, sexist and overinclusive as well as failure to acknowledge the existence of happy, well adjusted transpeople. For transsexuals, who require access to hormonal and surgical procedures, the current diagnostic criteria have failed to establish the medical necessity of HRT and SRS for most insurers and government entities. Substantive discussion of gender identity issues within the American Psychiatric Association is likely to follow.

More information on transgender medical policy issues is available at the GIC of Colorado web site at www.tgforum.com/tg/gic.


Board Nixes Gay Conversion Therapy
By Robert Weller
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 11, 1998; 10:37 p.m. EST

DENVER (AP) -- The American Psychiatric Association's board voted unanimously Friday to reject therapy aimed solely at turning gays into heterosexuals, saying it can cause depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior. "All the evidence would indicate this is the way people are born. We treat disease, not the way people are," said Dr. Nada Stotland, head of the association's joint committee on public affairs.

"The very existence of therapy that is supposed to change people's sexuality, even for people who don't take it, is harmful because it implies that they have a disease," said Stotland, of Rush Medical College in Chicago. "There is evidence that the belief itself can trigger depression and anxiety."

The American Psychological Association made a similar decision last year.

Gay activists applauded the decision. Proponents of converting gays said the decision could deny patients the treatment they want.

Some fundamentalist Christian religious groups attempt to persuade homosexuals to undergo treatment, sometimes called "reparative therapy," to convert to heterosexuality.

Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition began a national advertising campaign just before the killing of Matthew Shepard urging gays to convert.

Shepard, a 21-year-old gay University of Wyoming student, died Oct. 12 after a severe beating in Laramie, Wyo. Police believe he was attacked in part because he was gay.

Asked whether efforts to convert gays could result in attacks like the killing of Shepard, Stotland said spreading the idea that homosexuality is a disease or evil could make people "feel less inhibited about beating up gays, or not giving them jobs."

Stotland said during the psychiatric group's quarterly meeting that there is no evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.

John Paulk, a specialist on homosexuality and gender for the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, disagreed. He said there is no evidence that homosexuality is "biologically predetermined."

"This makes it more difficult for clients who want to be treated for unwanted homosexuality,'' Paulk said. ``Furthermore no scientific study has given conclusive evidence that homosexuality cannot be successfully treated."

David Smith, chief strategist for the Human Rights Campaign, said, "We applaud...the condemnation of this thoroughly discredited practice that causes great harm to people who are gay but not yet comfortable with their sexual orientation."

© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

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